Special_K

Woah, AJP! That's a blast from the past! (the past being two-odd years ago).

AJP Abdul Kalam actually visited the town where my boarding school was located (Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu), but he came when our school was /out of session/! He visited the other school in the town, instead. We had the worst luck when it came to VIPs: the Dalai Lama offered to come to our 100th anniversary celebrations, but some dolts in the administration refused to change the date of the celebrations to fit his schedule...

Aha, well, good thing you got the Doctor Strangelove reference, too. Maybe Slim was his grandfather.

Hm, cool. I'll still hold out for the price drop on SSDDs (it'll happen soon), but I like keeping my options open.

Meanwhile: CF. Wow, I can't believe that little format keeps on chugging. What are they up to now, capacity-wise? I know my camera uses CF, and I love how rugged the cards are. Never gonna' lose one of those (if I did, it'd mean losing about 400 pictures, so I'd better not). The only thing I hate about the format is the three-dozen tiny little pins in the male connector. Every single reader I've ever owned has had at least a few bent pins. This doesn't seem to actually affect performance, but it still speaks to how old the format is. Look at your computer now; the only connector with tonnes of bendable pins is VGA or DVA, and it's not like you're touching that that often.

Yes, but this is aimed squarely at the consumer market; FEMA don't need no stinkin' Windows Mobile. The calls will be crazy expensive (yes, 10x the price of a cell call) and quality will be shite (ever seen CNN coverage from Mogadishu?). Remember that satellite networks already exist in the US. This one is new in the sense that it allows you to communicate w/o an antenna (this is a boost, if you've seen satellite phone antennas, the smallest is the size of a lipstick tube) and across both terrestrial and sat. networks. FEMA, oil companies, et. al. use dedicated sat. phones and dedicated mobiles, they don't care about the antenna. They're the only people using sat. phones without care for cost, and they don't need convergence.

and by "downtown Oman", I meant "downtown Muscat, Oman"

I don't really know who the target market is for this thing. Serious satellite phones aren't used very often in the States, because the conventional mobile network is more than sufficient. This phone seems to use satellite networks as a means to 'plug the holes' in the network, which is semi-reasonable, but what kind of businessperson is travelling in areas where there is zero reception. Further, what kind of business would pay the exorbitant fees for the sat phone calls? Why not just wait for 20 mins until you get into an area with coverage?

Now, if this network existed in the Gulf, it'd be a hot ticket item. Emir gets out of his mansion in downtown Oman, gets in his Rolls Royce, and starts a call that will continue, uninterrupted, until he reaches his camel ranch in Aqtab Oasis, in the middle of the Empty Quarter. Hell, this thing seems built for the Gulf. Expand the network, and ship me 100 of these device; I'll sell all of them in an hour!

@ben:

They work by slowly grinding your self-esteem into nothingness, so that they can then offer to sell you a replacement: a Mac. I mean, watching those ads made me realize how pathetic a human being I am by not having a Mac... Oh God! FLASHBACK!!! I'm so terrible! I'm worthless! Just look at me: I'm fat, slovenly, and I'll settle for anything! Shit, John, control... just... just remember what Dr. Weber said: "Buying a new Mac will only make you feel better for a few months." No, fuck Dr. Weber! Good thing I've got the Apple Store on speed dial. Fuck yeah, MacBook Air, here I come!

Man, I wish that's what New Jersey looked like! They really need to add more raw sewage and asbestos along the side of the road; y'know, to make it more realistic.

Yep, that's exactly what they're saying. The chances of this happening are actually rather high, at least compared to what you'd expect: with 50-odd cables snapped a year by dragging anchors, it wasn't long before two proximate ones got snapped within a short time period. I suggest this article from The Economist in order to dispel any conspiracy theories that may be percolating in your tinfoil hat-covered head:

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10653963

Hey, I love it too! I really, really do! Let's start a club!